The Flight Portfolio

by Julie Orringer

  “Not some idiot,” Varian said. “Your lover’s son.”

  Grant got to his feet, hands on hips; his book had fallen to the grass. “Are you really telling me, Tommie, that you think I’ve been pulling the wool over your eyes all this time? That I recruited your help to find this boy, and went out to Vernet while you were a prisoner on the Sinaïa, and let Mary Jayne do what she did, all the while thinking to myself, ‘They’ll never know he’s just an ordinary fool, ha ha ha!’ ” He shook his head in disgust. He stood for some moments in silence, then raised his eyes to Varian’s.

  “I always thought your project was wrongheaded,” he said. “All that money, all that time, mustered on behalf of people who happened to know how to use a paintbrush or put a sentence together—and don’t mistake me, I know the value of art, I like to read and look at paintings as much as the next guy, more than most guys, if you’ll believe that—but this is a goddamn war, a war, and they’re all human beings, and how can you presume to pick which ones to save and which to throw into the fire? I always thought—and I never said it, because you were supposedly saving lives—that it was just another binary, another kind of black and white. He’s one thing, she’s another, so he can be sold as property and she can buy him. How different is it from that, really?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Grant, that is not at all—”

  “Is it not, Varian? Is it not? But anyway, despite the fact that I couldn’t fully countenance what it was you were doing, I saw how, in the case of someone like my lover’s son, someone whose life might truly be of value in saving thousands of others, a little extra effort might be justified. A little extra money diverted from somewhere else. And now you’re going to tell me I was lying? Why? To prove a point? To show you how misguided you were?” He laughed. “Why, wouldn’t that be rich! That’s just what I ought to have done. And then written about it for the Times.”

  “Why should I distrust Zilberman?”

  “Why should you? Are you really asking me that? Because you’d just put the boy onto the Sinaïa in his place, and now Zilberman was going to be deported to Germany!”

  But the doubts Zilberman had raised in his mind, the doubts he himself had felt from the outset, couldn’t be quieted. “Why should I believe you,” he said, “when you had plenty of reason to lie to me? To use my resources for your lover’s benefit? To collude with him against me? You said yourself that you sought me out—that it wasn’t mere coincidence. Why did you do that, Grant?”

  Grant bent over now and put his hands on his knees. When he straightened up again, his eyes had taken on a depth of misery Varian had never seen there.

  “Can you really ask that, Tom?” he said, and shook his head. “Can you really?”

  “I only know what Zilberman said. And I know that sometimes it’s expedient to lie. I know. I did it too, and not just to Eileen. That laborer who died in the car crash—I killed him, Grant. I did it, even if it wasn’t my car that hit him. Then I lived as if I hadn’t.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” Grant cried, throwing his hands groundward in a gesture of utter disgust. “This is not about Katznelson at all! And it’s not about that man who died in Concord. This is about you, about your own damn cowardice. You still can’t leave Eileen, can you? You know you can’t. And so you’ve got to do this thing, commit this absurdity.”

  “I’m trying to understand what you did, Grant. How you could have done it.”

  “You’re running,” Grant said. “That’s what you’re doing. You are on the run. You’re running for your life. You can’t bear the thought of leaving your wife and your future children, for a man! But you’re a homosexual, do you hear me? An invert! A fairy. A fag. All those things they call it—that’s what you are. Get it through your head. You love men. You love me. For God’s sake, quit being such an idiot for just a minute!”

  “You’ve changed the subject,” Varian said. “You’ve diverted. You’ve turned us away from the fundamental question. The issue is not whether or not I prefer men. The issue is not whether I’m ready to leave my wife. The issue is whether or not I can trust you. It’s whether or not you lied to me.”

  “Lev Zilberman lied. I’m sorry, Varian. Your brilliant painter wasn’t just brilliant in the artistic sense. He knew just how to get to you. Just where to grab you to make you pay for what you did to him. What an insecure fool you are!”

  “You might well call me a fool, Grant. But I don’t believe it’s Zilberman who duped me. What did he stand to gain? You, on the other hand—you and Gregor—”

  “I won’t stand for this. I won’t.” He put his hands on his hips and stalked through the garden, shaking his head. “What do I have to do? Apparently I’m guilty until proven innocent.” As he paced, Varian tried desperately, desperately, to read him: tried to determine from the angle of his eyebrows, from the tone of his familiar and beloved voice, from the way he held his shoulders as he waded through the long grass, whether he was lying or not. How was it possible to know someone so well and still not know? And how much truth was there in what Grant had said about him and Eileen?

  “Enough,” Grant said finally, coming to rest again before Varian. He fixed his eyes on Varian’s, his pupils fathomless in the gathering dark. “This is your problem, not mine. If you want to be finished with me, say so. You’re the one who’s got to decide. Though you’re behaving like a rabid idiot, my feelings for you are unchanged. Believe me, I understand. What you and I are proposing to do is not ordinarily done. As far as you’re concerned, we may as well be proposing to walk on the moon. But you’ve got to find your way there if we’re going to do it.”

  He picked up his metal garden chair and began to carry it up to the patio. At the base of the steps, he turned.

  “I’m going into town tonight,” he said. “I’m going to put up at the Beauvau. The return of Dr. Grant. Meanwhile, you take your time to think. I’m going to do some thinking myself.”

  Varian tried to respond, but his mouth had gone dry. He watched Grant go up into the house, he saw the light go on in their room. A few minutes later, as he stood frozen in the darkening garden, Grant came out again holding a suitcase, and walked down the driveway toward the train.

  * * *

  ________

  It took only moments, once Grant had disappeared from view, for a terrible fear to form in Varian’s mind: that Grant, making the journey into town in the evening air, alone, carrying a suitcase, walking at that furious pace, would fall ill again and die, and that it would be Varian’s fault. The fear was strong enough to send him running to the station. But Grant, even in his weakened state, was too fast for him; the train departed just as Varian arrived, and the next wouldn’t come for an hour. He bought a ticket anyway and waited, rode into town in a state of gut-burning anxiety, ran all the way to the Vieux Port. But by the time he reached the Beauvau, Grant had checked in and had given orders to the clerk that he not be disturbed.

  Rather than go home to their shared bed, Varian spent the night at the office again, huddled on a narrow settee that smelled of naphthalene and singed horsehair. In the morning he washed his face in the bathroom sink, brushed his teeth with the toothbrush he kept in his desk drawer, and stole a carnation from the arrangement on Lucie Heymann’s desk; regarding himself in the bathroom mirror, he saw the face of a desperate and haggard lover, shadow-eyed and narrow-lipped. He ran to the Beauvau through a deluge of slanting sun, telling himself that Grant would have to see him this morning, that his willingness to see Varian would indicate his innocence; but at the hotel he found the orders unchanged. The smooth-skinned young clerk—the one with the figure-eight-shaped birthmark high on his cheek—wouldn’t let him place a call to Grant’s room, nor would he reveal his room number.

  “Please,” Varian said, hating to beg, hating the note of panic in his own voice. He hated to see his reflection in all those mirrors, before and behind him an
d on both sides; what he saw was a drowning man, a man who didn’t know whether the lifesaving air lay above or below. “Please,” he said again. “Mr. Grant is my doctor. It’s a medical emergency.”

  The boy assessed him with a practiced eye. “You do not appear ill, Monsieur Fry.”

  “I’m ill!” Varian said, desperately. “Please, just give me the room number. I’ll make it worth your while.” He drew his wallet from his pocket and extracted all the money he had, some two thousand francs. “I can get more,” he said. “Give me the room number, and I’ll make it five thousand.”

  At that moment, the manager, tall and mustachioed, emerged from a mirrored door behind the desk; the boy threw him a glance, and the manager approached the counter and raised an eyebrow at the proffered francs. He recognized Varian, of course; he was the sort of manager who made it his business to know his guests.

  “Is there a problem, Monsieur Fry?” he asked. “Some trouble about your time with us?”

  The money trembled in Varian’s hand. “I must see a guest of yours. Monsieur Grant. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  “The esteemed Dr. Grant gave express orders that he not be disturbed. He particularly mentioned that you, Monsieur Fry, are not to be admitted. We must respect our guests’ wishes above all.” He placed a hand on the black telephone on the counter, silently implying that if Varian persisted, he would have to call the police.

  Varian put the money away and turned from the desk, turned from the merciless mirrors toward other merciless mirrors; he fled that infinity of self-reflection in a fog, half-staggering down to the edge of the water, where he stood staring out at the toylike boats on the serrated port. So Grant really would not see him for some time, an indeterminate period. He had given express orders, had insisted on keeping Varian away. The insult Varian had delivered was severe enough to have had that effect. Either that, or Grant was hiding in shame at Varian’s having discovered the truth.

  He walked the blinding streets to the office, thinking only that if he remained here in town, he would at least be within walking distance of the Beauvau. In the entryway of the building he found Danny’s lawyer, Navarre, waiting outside the door with a box of pastries and a metal thermos; his expression was as grim as it had been the day before, but Varian’s gratitude at the sight of him was so deep that he nearly burst into tears. A long moment passed before he could shake Navarre’s hand and let him into the office.

  “You look like you’ve spent the night awake, Monsieur Fry,” Navarre said. His voice, surprisingly low for his small frame, held a note of paternal admonition.

  “I’m sure Danny’s night was worse than mine,” Varian said, ushering Navarre into the office. “I have to say, Monsieur Navarre, I’m surprised to see you here. I thought there was nothing we could do until Monday.”

  Navarre set the box of pastries on the desk and opened it, revealing four dull gold scones. “Do you have a cup?” he said. “The coffee is not coffee, regrettably, but it is hot.”

  Varian produced the office coffee service, and Navarre poured off two steaming cups. “I’ve received some news since yesterday,” he said, setting a cup on Varian’s desk. “I’ve got a source at the Evêché, one who has proven to be a valuable wellspring of information. It is surprising to learn, Monsieur Fry, who can be bribed, and at what rate.”

  “Oh, yes,” Varian said. “I’ve got quite a list going myself.”

  “My source tells me that our friend Kourillo has been in league with the police for some time. This will not, I suppose, come as a shock. The terms of their deal were simple: The police wanted Kourillo to catch you, or anyone at the Centre Américain, breaking the law. Of course they promised him a rich reward if he managed it. He told them about the plan to exchange Monsieur Konstantinov’s gold, and they encouraged him to proceed—if he could implicate one of you, they would give him half the value of the coins as a petit cadeau. And they are not disappointed by the result. They consider that they have trapped you both—you and Monsieur Bénédite.”

  “But that’s false,” Varian said. “Danny told them I had nothing to do with it. I was nowhere near Kourillo’s hotel at the time. They can’t prove I was involved.”

  “You’ve been in contact with Kourillo for some time about this exchange. His story is likely to carry more weight in court than my client’s.”

  “Then why haven’t they come to arrest me already?”

  Navarre raised an eyebrow. “They believe you to be under the protection of the U.S. Consulate. Perhaps they have not yet grasped the implications of Monsieur Bingham’s departure. Or perhaps they believe the new vice-consul will support you.”

  “They’re deluded there, I’m afraid.”

  “Miss Gold, to whom I spoke last night, said just the same.”

  “Miss Gold! I don’t suppose you can tell me where she’s hiding out, can you? I’d like to find that boyfriend of hers and garrote him.”

  “Miss Gold insists I do my utmost for you and Monsieur Bénédite. She is, I should mention, paying my fee. She desired particularly for me to tell you that.”

  Varian sighed. “Well, tell her thanks, when you see her. And tell me what you think all this means—what it means for Danny, and for me. If Kourillo’s going to testify against him, or against both of us, and if he’s in the pocket of the Evêché, I’m afraid it all looks rather grim.”

  Navarre raised an eyebrow. “Will you give up so easily, Monsieur Fry?”

  “Do you see a way out? Because I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “If the consulate will indeed back the Centre Américain—if they will come to the aid of Monsieur Bénédite—perhaps the word of a person like Kourillo will not carry much weight in court. He is not, Monsieur Fry, the most shining of citizens. He is not, in fact, a French citizen, strictly speaking—his papers have always been a matter of contention. He is known to have had illegal financial dealings in the past. If we can add your consulate’s aid to my efforts, our case is far from futile.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Mais oui, I am here to tell you so.”

  “We’ve got to get Danny out of jail and cleared of charges. He’s got a little boy in the States. And he can’t be separated from his wife. I think it would kill them both.”

  “I do think we can avoid it, Monsieur Fry.”

  “But without Bingham’s help, I’m afraid I don’t see how. The guy who’s replacing him—”

  “Ah, yes. Monsieur Blount. I know him well, I’m afraid. Indeed, he is far from likely to aid us of his own volition, without some inducement. But I believe you may have something that could be of value to him—something you might trade.”

  Varian crossed his hands over his chest and leaned back in his chair. Outside, a clatter of pigeon wings rose and fell; a brief swift shadow passed the window. “Surely you don’t mean money,” he said. “I can’t produce a sum that could mean anything to Blount. Not even with Mary Jayne’s aid, if she were willing to give it.”

  “Not money. Something that would be of value to Blount’s career.”

  Varian squinted at Navarre. “I’m afraid I’m rather obtuse this morning.”

  “You must know, Monsieur Fry, that you are considered a source of some embarrassment—a bête noire, if you will—by the diplomatic community. Their projection of your potential effect here in Marseille fell laughably short. None of them believed you could do so much as locate the artists on your list, much less that you would extract so many of them from France. I suppose they also underestimated Monsieur Bingham. Underestimated, that is, the degree to which he would support your mission at the expense of his own diplomatic career. But your political capital has grown enormously in recent months. Perhaps you do not realize the extent of it.”

  “I know they want me out of France. So what?”

  “Want is perhaps too gentle a word. You have becom
e, as it were, a kind of diplomatic imperative.”

  “So you’re saying, Monsieur Navarre—what, exactly? That I’m the thing of value? You’re proposing a trade? You want me to take Danny’s place?”

  “Not take his place. Not a trade. Merely a deal.”

  “What sort of deal?”

  “Propose to Blount that if he steps in to protect Danny, you will leave France.”

  “Ah, I see. And even if I were to assent to such a thing—if I were willing to propose leaving my organization rudderless and leaderless—what makes you think he’d believe me?”

  “He will want to believe you, Monsieur Fry. He needs to. Ecoutez-moi, I have followed Monsieur Blount’s career for some time. In his former position as sub-vice-consul in Paris, he was responsible for the elimination of U.S. aid to the Société Spéciale pour la Protection des Réfugiés, an organization of particular interest to me. I was the société’s private counsel for twenty years, you see—since before the Great War—and a member of its governing board for ten. Apparently Monsieur Blount secured his position in Paris largely through personal favors. But his superiors had come to suspect that he was unequal to the demands of the job. They wanted him out of Paris, and after the occupation they wanted him out of Vichy—that is why he was sent to Marseille, under the guise of a promotion. He is a desperate person, Monsieur Fry—he knows his career hangs by a thread. But if you were to allow him the gloire of getting you thrown from France—if he were to be the one responsible—his immediate future would be secured.”

  “And so I’m simply to leave? Give it all up? Danny would never agree to it.”

  “Mais non! You mistake me. Make your promises to Monsieur Blount. Make it clear that you will leave the country as soon as Monsieur Bénédite’s freedom is secured. Then you may break your promise, if you wish. Do whatever you can to stay. That is what Monsieur Bénédite wants, too. You will not have your consulate’s protection, but, to be certain, without Bingham you would not have had it anyway.” Navarre sat back and sipped from his cup, regarding Varian from beneath the dark ridge of his eyebrows.